Word: brandos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...RAGING BULL is, as the advertisements would indicate, Robert DeNiro's movie. DeNiro combines all the wit and spontaneity and genuineness of a Method actor like Brando with all the craft and attention to detail of an Olivier. You become oblivious to the devices he's using: the way he takes the windmill motion of bodypunching, for example, and turns it into LaMotta's leitmotif. Things that DeNiro did to prepare for the movie--learning boxing well enough to become a good club fighter, for example, or gaining 60 pounds or whatever to play LaMotta in later life--have almost...
Once Marlon Brando's disguise has been penetrated and the great eccentric has been identified, such suspense as The Formula manages to generate comes to an abrupt and early end, though whatever fun and frolic the film offers depends solely on his occasional presence as the comically menacing leader of an oil cartel. Perhaps one should say the oil cartel. The movie traffics heavily in this kind of simple-minded paranoia. It insists that evil lurks in a single all-powerful force possessing the power to warp men's minds, condition their behavior and, of course, bump them...
...record, Brando is the character wearing granny glasses and a hearing aid, the one whose fringe of white hair curls cunningly around a large bald spot and whose corpulence is encased in a wardrobe that seems to have been picked up at a thrift sale managed by the estate of Charles Foster Kane. Brando has also got himself up with a down-home country-boy accent that makes his cynicism terribly appealing-especially in the bloody and lugubrious context of this emotionally unpunctuated movie. His performance is not truly good-it lacks a real edge of sharpness...
...especially interesting; John Avildsen's direction alternates between flatness and strain. Scott gives an imitation of his old force, but there is a lack of conviction in his playing that is, perhaps, understandable. If he is going to make this kind of film, he should learn from Brando how to take the money and hide out behind the makeup. As for Keller, she is just impossible, an actress whose monotony of tone dims everything she touches...
...companies are naturally unhappy about once again being cast in the role of the heavy. Mobil Oil lawyers have met privately with MGM officials to object. Says a Mobil spokesman: "This is not even a good piece of fiction." The clear winner from the film is Marlon Brando, who received a reported $250,000 a day for ten days' work. That is a real formula for making money...